Lao Voices

Many rice fields that covered the mountainous North of Laos are gone. They are steadily being replaced by rubber trees. The Chinese are coming to Laos and they need their rubber products for their galloping economy. It appears nothing can stop the ever growing Chinese machine that seems perpetually hungry for manufacturing products supplies.

The Chines are already scouring the world for mining and logging concessions. Now it is turning to crops to feed its people and industries. Chinese are buying up vast tracts of land and are also forging contract farming deals.

Of course, this is not all bad news. Many poor families now can make a nice living out of their rubber production. And yes, to be honest, there is corruption in Laos so bribes are to be expected. However, there is a fear that opportunitists in Laos will decide to hold a quick sell-out for the fast buck.

Laos’ communist regime touts rubber as a miracle crop that will help lift the country from poverty. China is expected to consume a third of the world’s rubber by 2020, become its largest car market and put 200 million vehicles on the road.

If you know this, you should understand that usable land is very valuable to the Chinese. There is no need to a fast sell-out, and, in the long run it will pay off to hold your investment a little longer to increase the value. The fast buck (or Kip) is most often not the best buck.

Some Laotian farmers are losing their lands or being forced to become wage workers on what were once their fields. Chinese companies are accused of getting rubber concessions from officials and not compensating farmers. They are also accused of violating laws, human rights and the environment, under conditions described by experts as “anarchic.” It is clear that the Lao government has an important role in protecting their environment and people. Most likely, if they sell out, Lao people will not prosper.

The Lao government is aware of this problem and ordered a moratorium on concessions over 100 hectares (247 acres), in part because it had become clear many were covers for logging.Entire hills in the north have been scalped of green cover, and rubber trees penetrate into the tangled natural forests. Also being cleared are secondary forests, sources of medicinal herbs and edible plants that tribal people have depended on for generations.

The government edict against concessions appears to have been ignored in the north, where local officials often a make the rules in an environment of corruption, ill-defined land laws, vague agreements and conflicting agencies.

“The Chinese companies do everything in their power to take advantage but they are also taken advantage of. The system is corrupt and there are loopholes and sometimes it works in their favor and sometimes against them,” says Weiyi Shi, an American economist who recently completed a study on the rubber industry.

The study found that when the China-Lao Ruifeng Rubber Company moved in, the frontier village of Changee lost most of its rice fields and grazing land and its burial grounds were desecrated. The pleas of villagers got no result and some protesters were reportedly held at gunpoint, with the Chinese using coercion through local authorities.

Some villagers even torch their surrounding forests, hoping the Chinese will come in and offer them rubber trees.

“They see what is in China, where people have gone from wooden houses to concrete, walking or bikes to motorbikes and cars, buffaloes to hand tractors and kerosene to electricity,” says Michael Dwyer, a natural resources researcher from the University of California, Berkeley. “They want the same.”

Farmers can hope to take home up to $1,200 from an acre of rubber — roughly seven times more than from growing rice. But it will be another six to seven years before latex begins to ooze from most trees in the north. Who can resist such a temptation?

Original article.